Greencastle to beef up communication with security grant

When Gov. Mike Pence announced more than $9 million in grant funding to schools through the Secured School Safety Grant Program Friday morning, what may have been lost in the big number is the impact those grants will have on the local level.

More than 200 individual grants comprise the inaugural round of funding from the program, in amounts no more than $50,000, meaning the funding will impact the safety of large numbers of students throughout the state.

Greencastle Community Schools students will be among those in a safer environment, after the corporation received a $32,783.98 matching grant.

GCSC security officer Shawn Gobert said the grant money will make the biggest impact in the area of communication between the schools and with emergency agencies.

Once the availability of the grant program was announced, Gobert, who is also the Ridpath Primary School principal, met with his fellow administrators about the safety needs of the five schools in the corporation.

They reached a consensus that safety could be increased if telecommunications, including two-way radios and mobile phones, were more reliable inside all the buildings. Much of the grant money will focus on these two areas.

"We are really dependent upon cell phone equipment to communicate, whether that be with each other or with first responders," Gobert said.

He said three buildings in the corporation experience "dead zones" for cell phone coverage, a situation that could prove dangerous in an emergency.

Tzouanakis Intermediate School, Greencastle High School and Mc-Anally Center will all have antennas installed to boost mobile phone signal for users inside and take away the dead zones.

Two-way radios are also used by school officials, and while reception is not so much a problem, some of the technology in use in the corporation has grown antiquated.

Some grant dollars will go toward the purchase of new portable two-way radios and base stations. The new radios will have the ability to scan from channel to channel, increasing communication options.

Additionally, the old radios will not be scrapped, but will instead be reprogrammed and given to personnel such as school counselors, who could have previously used radios but did not have them.

Some of the money going toward two-way radios will also be used for programming the radios and FCC licensing fees.

One final communication tool to be purchased is a computer program that allows key personnel to send alerts directly to district computers.

Administrators will have options of who these alerts are sent to, including the entire district, a specific building or just specific computers.

While the option is already available to send such communications through email, the new software will create an automatic pop-up message to ensure that staff is alerted immediately, rather than having to log in to email and read a specific message.

Gobert pointed out that the improved communication of these resources will help school officials address smaller crises that do not even grab the attention of the general public.

"A lot of people think of a crisis as a headline making event but it is important to realize a crisis can be a much smaller event, not just 'worst case scenario,'" Gobert said. "These resources will allow us to improve our communication abilities for smaller but still serious issues such as medical emergencies for students or staff as well as community crises like we ran into last spring when police were pursuing suspects who were on or near TZ property."

In addition to the communications purposes, funds will also go toward security camera replacement and a number of other security needs.

GCSC applied for the money through the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, with Gobert writing the grant.

While Gobert had been monitoring the progress of the funding, he had not heard of official approval, or that Greencastle received the full amount for which it applied, until notified by the Banner Graphic Friday afternoon.

"That's awesome," an excited Gobert replied. "That means we got the whole thing. That's huge."

Several hundred administrators around the state likely had a similar reaction after Gov. Pence made the announcement from Cedar Elementary School in Avon.

"The safety of the students, teachers, and administrators in our schools is of the utmost importance to the people of Indiana, and I count it a privilege to distribute these resources to schools across our state," the governor said. "These grants will allow our public schools and school corporations to add resources that will help secure our schools so they can focus on educating our students."

The program is a dedicated state grant fund that provides matching grants to school corporations, charter schools, or coalitions of school corporations and/or charter schools applying jointly to:

* Employ a school resource officer (SRO).

* Conduct a threat assessment.

* Purchase equipment to restrict access to the school or expedite the notification of first responders.

Gobert said GCSC officials have already reviewed the possibility of a resource officer and regard such a plan as unrealistic and likely unnecessary.

Additionally, he said they have conducted threat assessments in the past, and thought pursuing the third option was the best choice for Greencastle.